DONALD TRUMP credits the tariffs he has imposed on steel and aluminium imports, and on a range of Chinese products, with almost magical potency. Either they will force other countries to drop trade barriers and crown him as dealmaker-in-chief, or they will pay down government debt while saving favoured industries. “Plants are opening all over the US, Steelworkers are working again, and big dollars are flowing into our Treasury,” he tweeted on August 4th. How do those claims stack up?
Tariffs are taxes on imports and so will bring some cash to treasury coffers. But comparatively little. In 2017 America’s government borrowed around 3.5% of GDP. Had the new tariffs been in place, and under the (extreme) assumption that the same goods had been imported despite costing more, they would have raised only 0.08% of GDP. Even including all Chinese imports, the number would have risen to just 0.7% of GDP. And that is before considering tariffs’ depressive effects on…
